See What Children Know
A responsive adult not only helps an infant grasp a desired object, but also entices her to obtain an object just beyond a comfortable reach. A child’s development depends on both the support and the challenge offered by a parent or teacher. Watch how this calm and responsive adult shakes the rattle to elicit the infant’s orientation to the object, but also smiles intermittently to let the infant know that this is a shared experience. The game is not simply about grasping the noise-making object. The triangle of infant, adult, and object makes this encounter one of framing the game as safe and fun, achieving a voluntary grasp of a rather large object, and bonding with the familiar face of the adult. The adult knows that she can elicit an automatic grasping reflex by placing the object directly in the palm of the infant’s hand. But on this day the adult decides to raise the child’s curiosity in the object by shaking it and through her smiles inviting the child to reach, contact, and close her fingers around the object as a pre-mediated, voluntary act. The adult makes several adjustments in her strategy when playing this game with a second infant.
When you play the video (click here) you also will see time code that marks the various strategies that the adult uses and the resultant actions from the infant. You may see other strategies or have comments about the overall thrust of these encounters.
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Notes from the Field
Many of you may know about CLASP, a clearing house of information about public policy and national data on education and family support. Here is a direct link to their latest set of resources and publications on Early Childhood Education. Click here Please let us know in our blog if you would like to discuss the current initiatives in progress.
I am wondering if this is the best position for the adult to be in. It appears that if she would move more to the side of the child that both might be more comfortable with this interaction.
I have a question as well. It seems to me that the infant is more interested in the sensory experience of mouthing the tubes and is being distracted from her own projects by the adult. I wonder if there was some previous observation that the adult had been making over recent days suggesting that the infant was interesting in practicing reaching/grasping? If so, then perhaps I was looking for the action on the part of the infant to release the first object and give the adult the message, “I’m ready to try something new,” before the adult reorients the infant’s attention to the new rattle. As a teacher of very young children, I often find that the infamous short attention span is caused by adults, not children!